A friend just pointed me to an article about this stunning moving house, designed by London-based architecture firm dRMM. Must have been a great client to have. It looks beautiful.
And technically impressive, even though it turns out  that they’ve been making moving houses for ages. Villa Girasole, which follows the sun, was built in 1935.

Feel inspired by the collaborative effort of Bart Hess and Lucy McRae, quite aptly called Lucy And Bart.
In their own words: “instinctual stalking of fashion, architecture, performance and the body”.

The first one was the great 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa. If you’re familiar with the work of design studio Sanaa, you’ll understand it when I say that the space is quite minimal. Still, it works very nicely, also because they had a few art works commissioned as part of the architecture. There’s one of those James Turrell sky-windows, but the real clincher was this clever, but beautiful piece by Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich. 

They also had a really nice collection, mixing Western conceptual chaps like Jan Fabre and Damien Hirst with local artists and incorporating more ‘popular’ platforms like animation and figurines. I particularly liked this great installation by Yoshitomo Nara, in collaboration with graf.

The other museum we visited was possibly one of the most amazing buildings I’ve ever seen. The ChiChu museum was commissioned by some big cheese at the Benesse Corporation, on the old fishing island of Naoshima, just to house his 4 ‘Water Lilies’ by Monet. That’s right: one museum for 4 paintings. But it’s an amazing space, designed by boxer-turned-architect Tadao Ando and built more or less into a hill. 
It’s all very Nihon-clinical and almost lab-like (you have to take off your shoes before you tread on the white marble mosaic that makes up the floor of the main room), but it’s so well done it makes you smile. 
Taking pictures if forbidden, but this person managed to take a few.
Just go.

In the previous Japan post, I mentioned the Japanese tendency to experiment a lot with design and their obsession with it. When we went to visit the 21-21 Design Sight pavillion (made by Tadao Ando), we stumbled upon an exhibition called ‘Second Nature’, curated by a designer called Tokujin Yoshioka, which confirmed that thought. 

Apart from very interesting art/design pieces, like human/tree hybrids and chairs made of crystals whose growth is influenced by playing different kinds of music, the setting was amazing. The ceiling of the gallery was covered in 360,000 plastic straws, which made you feel like you were walking in another eerie, beautiful universe. 

We weren’t allowed to take pictures (an interesting habit in most of Japanese galleries), but Wallpaper has a nice collection of stills, plus a Q&A with the designer/curator.